A black box, also called flight recorder, is a device mounted on board aircraft, which stores various flight data during the flight, and/or audio data (such as discussions between members of the crew) and/or optionally, visual data such as videos and/or images. The flight data originates from various sensors present on board the aircraft, which collect various flight data, and computers that supply flight parameters and maintenance data of the various on-board systems and equipment.
These black boxes are generally orange in colour and are equipped with a radio transmitter so that they can be located more easily, for example after a crash.
However, it is found that recovery of these black boxes following a crash is difficult, in particular because by far the greater part of the earth's surface has an irregular topology.
In fact, it is difficult to recover black boxes from the bottom of the oceans or from crevasses in mountain ranges.
However, the data contained in these devices are important for finding out the causes of an air disaster and for working to rectify the cause in order to prevent the same kind of disaster being repeated.
Moreover, other types of data present on board aircraft in flight would be useful for personnel in ground facilities. There is therefore felt to be a need for a reliable solution enabling said personnel to have access to data relating to an aircraft in flight, such as, but not exclusively, black box data.